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Widespread importance given to the marine environment

ITOPF has published its Annual Review for 2016. ITOPF reports attending 20 new incidents from tankers and non-tankers, with the largest spill bein under 130 tonnes, and most were of less than 100 tonnes. This reinforces the trend towards less and less oil being spilled through shipping accidents. However, says ITOPF: "the significance of an incident is not always measured by the quantity of oil spilled but by the complexity of the issues surrounding it. For ITOPF this means that staff are sometimes engaged in the monitoring and assessment of pollution damage for many months, even years, afterwards."

This very important observation comes at an important time when authorities around the world are relying on less incidents and less spillage to explain why they continue to not have reli able contingency plans in place. OSRA has been instrumental at raising awareness in the Mediterranean, particularly in Malta, Tunisia and Libya and also various port authorites in Greece. Our experts have worked alongside world-known figures in the industry to build Malta's contingency plan, to study the implications of the oil industry in Libya and recently met with MOIG and ETAP to present our views for Tunisia's national OSR capability. Our partner in Italy provides the spill response services for the industrial port of Taranto. And our partners in Turkey have provided oil spill response and related response services across 8 Tier 2 response bases serving the BTC pipeline.

The environment has become even more a priority to the whole world. In 2015, we have seen the Paris Treaty on climate change - recently ratified by China and the United States during the G20 summit. In June this year, the member national shipowners’ associations of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) have agreed to commence a co-ordinated campaign to persuade the EU of the vital necessity of aligning its unilateral regulation on the monitoring of shipping’s CO2 emissions with the mandatory worldwide CO2 reporting regime that has been agreed by the UN International Maritime Organization (IMO). The waters are no less important. For example, as part of the implementation the EU's Marine Directive, in 2018 we will see the first of a review of the implementation of various criteria including the effects of "acute pollution events" like spills.

OSRA will continue to assist countries and authorities to reach the highest standards of good environmental status. The team may be contact on commercial@osraint.com.